


The Path of Aloneness

by Herbalina



Category: Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)
Genre: And what have you not, Angst and Feels, Cyberpunk, Denial of Feelings, F/M, Feelings, Gen, M/M, Mild Smut, Miyamoto Musashi - Freeform, One Shot, POV Second Person, Tragic Romance, Unrequited Love, after Search and Destroy, alternative, come on we need more takemura content damn it, destiny and some other bullshit irresistible force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 21:48:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29864556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Herbalina/pseuds/Herbalina
Summary: This is not what happened, but what could have happened.After Search and Destroy, together you and Takemura Goro seek a moment of repose, a small corner of silence against the myriads of neon light and holo promises in Night City.
Relationships: Goro Takemura/V, V/V (Cyberpunk 2077)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 19





	The Path of Aloneness

**Author's Note:**

> Flickers and optics and kiroshi = eyes
> 
> This V has a corpo life path, finished the Delamain quest by merging them and again, this is happening after the quest Search and Destroy in the case V saves Takemura. 
> 
> Enjoy:)

In a cramped, decaying motel that housed hundreds of nameless souls in the same cut-out bland, faded, slightly smelling of something that cannot be bleached away rooms, you open your eyes in one. Across the bed, a single tv screen hawks the entire space. Ads boom out filling the emptiness. Always the ads. 

"You wake." 

A familiar voice. 

"Ta...Takemura?" You sit up slowly, feeling your head is splitting into two.

"How are you doing?" He asks, leaning against the back of that piece of plastic meant to be a sofa. 

The two of you barely escaped the hell hole flooded with Arasaka soldiers "rescuing" Hanako, you called Delamain Jr. and together you headed for Jig-jig street, hoping to lose your traces in the forever-lit magenta haze of holograms and never-ending traffic of nobody's nobodies. Upon arrival, you passed out just at the right time. 

Next thing you know, you woke up in a motel room stank of cheap perfume and something you don't want to think too much about. 

"Alive," you moan, hands reaching for your head, "for the moment. You?"

"A few scrapes, nothing I cannot manage." He replies with the usual steadiness, no-nonsense.

”Here.”

You look up and surprised to find Takemura holding a cup of something steaming in front of you, "an insult to green tea, but it is all I could find," he grunts in disapproval. 

All you could think is...? 

Well, you realize you don't know what to think now. After all this time, he expresses his concern for you on such a personal level, confined in a space in other occasions you might even say _imitate_ ; conspiratorial. Your head hurts, your kiroshi flickers in and out, everything floats. For the first time since your royal fuck-up of a heist with Jackie, you don't want to think clearly, calculate every move. You just want to be. Take in. Feel.

With a shaky hand, you take the cup; his synthetic fingers brush against yours. You know it's because of the tea cup, but for that split second, you let the sensors on your fingertips ripple in his warmth. 

"Thanks, Takemura," you say.

"No, it is I who should do the thanking, V," he replies, with just a singe of almost-regret and something you can't quite read.

"If not for you, right now I would have been a corpse labeled as traitor, laid out for Yorinobu to act as scapegoat." 

You think you heard his teeth grind with the mention of Yorinobu.

He sighs, looks at you with a curious glance, "but you came back for me. Why? You could have died."

Why? You ask yourself the same question, even before Johnny asks you. You don't know. All you saw when your flickers went back online in the rubble was Takemura's face as he dropped you off at Vik's place after your rites of passage. You just knew you could not turn your back and walk away. Something lodged between your ribcage would hurt too much.

"I'm dying anyway." You dodge the question, "’sides, you saved me once, gotta get even."

You know he saved you because you are the witness to his idolized master's murder, but you'd like to think, after all these changes, all the missions you went through together, you are now more than just a piece of evidence to him, if that might be a tried lie even for him to himself: after all you've seen, all you've lived, all Johnny has died trying to achieve, you cannot, will not go back to your old life at Arasaka. But you know Takemura wants to; he has to. You are helping him to. What will happen when he does?

He stays silent. Maybe he picks up your grim thoughts, too. Maybe he's simply tired. It’s been a long, long day. You all deserve a moment of respite.

For now, you are content enough. Catching a breath in Night City, even one filled with pungent cheap perfume and leftover food, is a precious moment you don't want to waste. 

You let the tea anchor your senses back to your heels and stand up -- attempt to, then fail miserably and land on Takemura's half-reached-out arms. 

He catches you without a second's pause. And, for that one moment, that one aimless, pointless, totally arbitrary and haphazardly accidental moment, a moment strayed out of orbit, spinning futilely out of place, out of time. Out of the time you don't even have. 

_ Just this moment,  _ you tell yourself,  _ I just want a tiny little piece of this moment. _ **Some ancient Japanese zen master might have found virtue and wisdom in the void, to you it is only a tangled, incomprehensible illusory of cold.

And Takemura... Takemura's body next to your is so solid and so warm. 

"V --?" He mutters in a surprised, low voice, his cold unblinking optics staring into yours, he sees how you are surrounding him in; he lets you. His hands find the small of your back, unsurely, yet he does not stop. When his hands travel to the old scar on your shoulder blade, you kiss. Breathless. Hopeless. Heedless.

"What are we doing..." He murmurs into the darkness, the crannies and nooks of your collar bone. You are not sure if it's the scrub of his beard that hurt you or your stupid body simply starts to fail again. 

"Seizing the moment." You murmur back. What you don't say is:  _ forgetting the moment. _ Instead, you extend yourself to him, urgently and unabridged, just for once, just for a moment, you want to stop being alone. You touch him with mouth and fingers, with the lukewarm air of a summer that might never arrive. You touch him, and gradually feel his fear and regret slipping -- not away, never away, but they do retreat inside, deeper,  _ hibernation on command  _ \-- and he gives up, gives in, for this moment; your moment, the collective ecstasy.

When the moment passes, you sit up, unable to follow up the silence following this beautiful long indulgence of a moment. 

"This is the height of my thieving career," you say the thought out loud, and try very hard to make it sound like a joke.

"Huh?"

"I've stolen the best moment I couldn't even dream of."

Neither of you tries to look at each other. The lukewarm air of late May hums under the monotonous drill of the electric fan above. Around and around and around it goes and it doesn't stop. 

After a long time, he finally says, "I also." And with that, he turns around and looks at you and, you find no regret in his eyes. You want to smile, but somehow you only get sneaked up by an rapture of pain blooming between your ribcage, where, you think, they say the heart beats. 

"Don't forget me, Goro."

"I will not."

"Can we stay here until morning?"

"We can."

Then he tells you stories of Chiba-11, of summers with quick rain and cicada trilling in the leaves of real trees, of grandmothers and their tales of old, of a place you cannot afford to visit even in dreams, and of a place he had registered to call home. 

"You should come visit," he says, "when _this_ is all over." 

"Yeah, that sounds nice."

You don't want to know when _this_ will be all over. You don't want to compare his "this is all over" to yours; not now, anyway. 

Now, you sleep. 

When you wake up this time, you know you are on your own once again. His texts explaining he's meeting Hanako's people lie unaffectedly in your phone, the electric fan hums the same monotonous tone as it did last night, you pour yourself another cup of that same deplorable green tea, shake your head at the mysteriously missing taste you had on your tongue, and you know, you are ready again for a venture in Night City,  where the neons are never dead, the hologram ads forever erect, waiting, for a cicada-less summer sky. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> ** was referring to this in The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi, an important philosopher and swordsman, also a ronin (ahem remind you of anyone?): “In the void is virtue, and no evil. Wisdom has existence, principle has existence, the Way has existence, spirit is nothingness." 
> 
> I started off thinking this scene would happen in the deserted balcony outside of Maiko’s office at Clouds, and there would be more talking than you know ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) But sometimes you gotta let the poor characters have their say, I didn’t want to stop the flow, so here it is. I hope you liked it and as always, kudos and comments are <3 Thank you for chippin’ in ;)


End file.
